Take banks, for instance.  Can you picture a dignified New York Trust Company with bowls of wild flowers placed about the desks and a general air of hospitality?  In one bank I have often had a pleasant half-hour very like an afternoon tea, where all the officers, from the president down, came to shake hands and ask after the children.  Of course, that is a rather unusually pleasant and friendly bank, even for California.  Always I am carefully, tenderly almost, escorted to my motor.  At first this flattered me greatly, till I discovered that there is a law in California that if you slip and hurt yourself on any one’s premises, they pay the doctor’s bill.  Hence the solicitude.  I was not to be allowed to strain my ankle, even if I wanted to.

Probably the same geniality existed in the East fifty years ago.  I have been told that it did.  It is a very delightful stage of civilization where people’s shells are still soft, if they have shells at all.  There is an accessibility, a breeziness and camaraderie about even the prominent men—­the bulwarks of business and public life.  We are accused of bragging and “boosting” in the West.  I am afraid it is true.  They are the least pleasant attributes of adolescence.

Banking isn’t the only genial profession.  There is real estate.  Of course about half the men in California are in real estate for reasons too obvious to mention.  Providence was kind in putting us into the hands of an honest man, better still, one with imagination, when we came to look for a winter bungalow.  He saw that we had to have something with charm, even if the furniture was scarce, and took as much pains over realizing our dream as if we had been hunting for a palace.  It was he who found our “Sabine Farm,” which brought us three of the best gifts of the gods—­health, happiness, and a friend.  We had almost decided to take a picturesque cot that I named “The Jungle,” from its tangle of trees and flowers, even though the cook could reach her abode only by an outside staircase.  The boys had volunteered to hold an umbrella over her during the rainy season, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with this arrangement.  Just then we saw an enchanting bungalow set in a garden of bamboos, roses and bananas, and looked no further!  It belonged to an English woman who raised Toggenburg goats, which made it all the more desirable for us as the goats were to stay at the back of the garden, and provide not only milk but interest for the boys.

J——­ dubbed it “El rancho goato” at once.  Our friends in the East were delighted with the idea, and many were their gibes.  One in particular always added something to the address of his letters for the guide or diversion of the R. F. D. postman:  “Route 2, Box so-and-so, you can tell the place by the goats”; or during the spring floods this appeared in one corner of the envelope:  “Were the goats above high water?”